It is just wrong that the scientist claims exclusive rights to thinking about these things. The scientists are claiming exclusive territorial rights they are not entitled to. Metaphysics is not a relic that has been rendered obsolete by its superior child science. Science has its foundations in metaphysics; science answers to metaphysics – not the other way round. Empirical investigation makes assumptions about reality: the existence of an objective world, the reliability of logic and reason, the uniformity of nature. These are metaphysical issues. It is staggeringly arrogant of the scientific purist to cast metaphysics aside as a product of a biological function in the brain – such a claim is absurd and offensive. Towards the end of the Renaissance, the Enlightenment philosophers were bringing Ancient Greek wisdom back into fashion. The early scientists were grappling with the uncertainty of esoteric angst brought on by Descartes’ Meditations, and the result was the Scientific Method. But the Enlightenment philosophers meant that the Scientific Method complement the whole philosophical realm of enquiry. Science tries to dismiss metaphysics just when it is clearly dealing with the metaphysical dilemma of it’s conceptual limits. Science is enquiring into areas of physics and chemistry, that is, the study of energy and matter, where the Scientific Method breaks down and starts getting some really irrational results. Metaphysics has learned a lot from the scientists, and we are deeply indebted to the field’s enquiry, but science has not rendered its foundations obsolete, and it is clear science is addressing metaphysical issues that can’t be dealt with using traditional scientific restraints.
Science presents a picture so obscure only the smartest and specifically educated can understand it. But ordinary people like to think about blackholes, the Big Bang, absolute states, cosmic speed limits, the nature of time, and the rest. That requires people like me— I’m not a scientist; I’m a philosopher. I take the incomprehensible and spin it into something people can understand, relate to, and use in their lives. And for the purist, you are right; it’s not science, it’s science fiction. But gosh— it is fun to play with these ideas, and I think I have spun some very scientific fiction here. So stuff you arrogant prick scientist, tell me I live in a fantasy world when you have a head full of math hardly anyone understands and I have a firm grip of reality.
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